New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: Bernard HerrmannSunday, 26 May 2019
Debates about whether 1964’s Marnie presaged Alfred Hitchcock’s downslide as a force will run and run. Read more... |
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Cardiff Castle review - wonder within castle wallsSaturday, 25 May 2019
Blessed with a red sunset and an adoring crowd, Noel Gallagher brought life to the ruins of Cardiff Castle. With support from fellow 90s alumnus Gaz Coombes, and Wales’s next-gen prodigies Boy Azooga and Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard, the evening provided a winning mini-festival affair. Read more... |
Spice Girls, Croke Park, Dublin review - uncomplicated funSaturday, 25 May 2019
They’re back and they’re looking and sounding good – and Spice Girls mania took over Dublin’s city centre for several hours before their concert yesterday. Hotels were booked out, every other woman I passed in the street was wearing a Spice Girls T-shirt or hat, and by mid-afternoon the whole city appeared to be moving as one towards Croke Park. Read more... |
The Waterboys, Roundhouse review - energetic delightsSaturday, 25 May 2019
Was it imagination or did The Waterboys’ audience at London’s Roundhouse, invited to sing along to “The Nearest Thing to Hip”, really sing extra-loud and lustily on the line “in this shithole”? Read more... |
Oh Sees, Tramshed, Cardiff review - breakneck wig outsFriday, 24 May 2019
Oh Sees have long been touted of as the perfect festival band. Their racuous, high-tempo rock'n'roll always riles up the drunken swathes, even if no-one recognises the song. However, going to a headline show is a different prospect - these swathes are the loyalists, not ready to accept anything less than carnage. Read more... |
Rokia Traoré: Dream Mandé: Djata, Brighton Festival 2019 review – resonant griot wisdomThursday, 23 May 2019
Rokia Traoré’s passage through this year’s Brighton Festival has been central, binding it to her Malian identity in a series of gigs. This hands-on Guest Director’s pulsing Afro-rock Opening Night was followed by the first Dream Mandé show’s recasting of traditional sounds. A Malian Dance Night added FGM protest, Seventies s.f.-soundtracked myth and cheeky wit from young choreographers. Read more... |
Mark Knopfler, Royal Albert Hall review - the Sultan's returnWednesday, 22 May 2019
Prufrock might have measured his life in coffee spoons but for many of us it’s rock albums, the money to buy them way back when scrabbled together from Saturday jobs and student grants – remember them? Read more... |
Primal Scream, The Haunt, Brighton review - up-close, short, raucous and sweatyTuesday, 21 May 2019
Primal Scream have played in this city, in the recent past, at the 4,500 capacity Brighton Centre but tonight they’re in a venue which holds well under 400. A bananas atmosphere reigns when bands of their stature play intimate shows, and so it is tonight. Read more... |
Sting and Shaggy, Roundhouse review - wilfully uncool and irrepressibly good funMonday, 20 May 2019
Musical odd couples don't come much stranger than Sting and Shaggy. Read more... |
Rokia Traoré: Dream Mandé: Bamanan Djourou, Brighton Festival 2019 review – traditions soar freeMonday, 20 May 2019
Much of Rokia Traoré’s set on Saturday night comprised folk songs about Mali’s warrior kings, connecting with her country’s fabulously wealthy, proudly powerful past. They suit this diplomat’s daughter’s regal stature, which she has put at the service of a nation still enviably rich in musical resources, but battered by civil war, poverty and terrorist attack. Read more... |
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